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Charles Gibbs, president of Creative Adventure Club, a company that incorporates homestays into some of its trips, likes to make sure that his clients are prepared for this. 'We ask them, 'Can you pee in the woods?'' he says. CAC specializes in trips to Indonesia, Australia and the Asia Pacific area, so a homestay might mean joining the whole tribe in a Borneo longhouse, or spending a night or two in a Thai home held up by stilts so you can pull your elephant right up to the porch. 'You have to make sure people can handle what's going on,' says Gibbs. 'In the western part of New Guinea, none of the women wear tops; the men's balls are hanging out in the breeze. Before they go, people might think it's disgusting; afterwards, they think it's cool. You can hear about it. You can read about it. But this is raw life.'

And if one of the reasons for travel is to get closer to it, homestays are a perfect vehicle. 'Our lives may be totally different, but there's a curiosity about people,' Gibbs says. 'What makes life interesting is when you can go out and see somebody whose whole frame of reference is different than yours. If you can spend a night or two with a family, you're going to see things you've never seen before.'

Trying out a homestay can open up a whole new world. Search the Internet and you'll be inundated with options-homestays to fill every need. There are homestays on Wyoming cattle ranches. Homestays exclusively for gay men. Farmstays in the Australian outback. Wherever you're going, homestays can deliver the very things most travelers leave their towns to find. Not just new places-but new people. They let you have your adventures-as well as a place at the end of the day that welcomes you back home.

Jim Koningisor, a Boston consultant, made the same discovery with his wife and four kids during a string of Native American homestays in the American Southwest. After deciding to avoid the usual 'drive-by vacation,' the family stayed with Sioux, Navajo and Hopi families on their reservations. They learned how to set up a tepee (and sleep in it). They heard the story of Wounded Knee-from a man who'd been there. Later, Koningisor's 12-year-old daughter gave the trip rave reviews. 'I saw and learned more than I ever had before,' she wrote, 'even if that meant eating buffalo guts.' Which it did.

The trip was arranged by anthropologist Robert Vetter, who runs Journeys Into American Indian Territory. He's recently added homestays to his cultural tour menu. 'The objectives of people traveling are changing,' notes Vetter. 'They used to go to be in a different place. Now that they've been all around, the objective is to get a sense of culture and the people who live there. There's a richness of experience when you've been accepted into the heart of the people who live there and shared meals and daily life.'

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